Occasionally, presidential candidates are going to embrace bad, unpopular ideas. That's to be expected, I suppose; no candidate is going to get every issue exactly right.

But Bill Richardson's support for a Balanced Budget Amendment is just bizarre. He not only supports a bad policy, but he brags about it, as if he assumes others are going to agree with him.

Apparently, the New Mexico governor touted his BBA policy at YearlyKos this afternoon.

Oh, man. Bill Richardson just repeated his call for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the constitution. The audience, showing what I think is a pretty impressive level of knowledge of budget policy, erupted in boos. And rightly so. This is a terrible idea. Fortunately, Richardson's not going to be president, but imagine if we'd had such a thing in place during, say, the second world war. I dunno what Richardson thinks he's doing.

Richardson didn't slip up and accidentally mention this today; he frequently plugs his support for a constitutional amendment on this on the stump, and emphasizes his position in interviews.

It's hard to imagine what Richardson hopes to accomplish by endorsing such a remarkably bad idea. Occasionally, deficit spending is absolutely necessary to the health of the economy. Indeed, during a recession or a war, deficits are practically essential.

The BBA is a rather cheap gimmick and an awful policy, which is why the audience was less than receptive today. The sooner Richardson drops the proposal from his repertoire, the better.